Twitter and journalism: It shouldn’t be that complicated — Tech News and Analysis

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The Associated Press caused a minor furor recently when the news-wire service updated its social-media policy and forbade its writers from expressing any opinions on Twitter, including implied opinions caused by retweeting others. In the wake of that controversy, Jeff Sonderman at the Poynter Institute has suggested that journalists could use their own Twitter shorthand to prevent anyone from getting the wrong impression when a reporter retweets something. But as I’ve argued before, all we really have to do is admit that journalists of all kinds might have opinions, instead of trying to pretend that they don’t, or trying to force them not to.

According to the Associated Press policy (PDF link), the risk in simply retweeting comments made by others — without any kind of disclaimer or added comment — is that readers might assume that the retweet is an endorsement of whatever views are expressed by the original poster.…